This saying is that personnel is policy. Who is appointed to a particular role says a lot about the importance and priority of the task at hand.
Generally, you put your best people onto the tasks considered most important and your lesser people on the tasks, obviously, less important.
In Machiavellian environments, like politics, there are certain tasks that you want to look like you are prioritizing but you really don’t want any traction. In those cases, there is a certain class of people you appoint who will make a lot of noise, look really busy, but in the end will achieve nothing. And in some cases, will retard the actual task.
In Australia, for example, whenever the government wants to take the political heat out of something but achieve nothing, they appoint Arthur Sinodinos. Similarly, if they just want to retard a function without care for the politics or consequences, Stuart Robert is the man for all seasons.
It is no different overseas with the news overnight that incoming US President Joe Biden has nominated former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry to be his Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. For those unfamilar, John Kerry has an exceptionally long record of solipsistic bloviation accompanied with an equally long record of non-achievement.
For all the talk of green new deal, a renewables new world order and the end of US fracking, in 4 years at the end of the Biden administration, expect there to be a continuation of Kerry’s unblemished record of record of non-achievement.
John Kerry is the US version of Prince Charles.
Both are off the planet bonkers, both are obnoxious.
His major achievement might have been marrying a lady with considerable wealth and beauty.
That is an optimistic scenario and it is about the best we can expect.
But you can still do a lot of damage without achieving anything in climate control and sabotage of thepower supply.
I meant to put up a post first thing this morning but I forget and you have trumped me!
John Forbes Kerry: You’d think even God couldn’t create men as petty, selfish, cheap, vain and lazy as this narcissistic K Mart Kennedy. But there you are.
We hardly blink anymore because the world has gone completely crazy on so many issues, but how utterly ridiculous is a Special Presidential Envoy for Climate?
We have regressed over 1000 years, such is the level of superstition.
The good news is that John Kerry won’t end up being our King. Mrs Plinge theorises the Queen might bypass Charles and appoint one of his sons as monarch.
God, I hope so!!
At least Kerry will be kept away from the Middle East
From jupes at 7:01 am:
If the coup d’état succeeds, and the corrupt, senile, millionaire pensioner on the take gets wheeled in by Kamala (“I’m anybody’s – wanna root?”), appointments such as Kerry getting a gig will be just the first of many hilarious comedy pieces to enjoy. The USA is worthy of a jolly good mocking for every day of its descent into a third world oligarchy, populated by marauding gangs all in it for an easy quid.
Sounds like “Bomber” Beazley.
If Biden is installed there will be no end to the Biden administration. He, or some other similar puppet, will be there in perpetuity, they will see to it.
Once you get away with fraud on such a grand scale the only way to reverse it is by force.
Biden has never accomplished anything in his career except being Obama’s comic relief. He won’t put capable persons into roles which will show him up.
More nominees who hit the right sound bites, release a statement then do nothing.
And if they want to completely destroy something utterly (eg, deregulation, the energy market or the Treasury), they appoint Josh Frydenberg.
There was an old “Dilbert’ cartoon, precisely about this sort of thing,.to be found on the noticeboards in various establishment.
The issue was a perceived need for an “employee” recognition’. It turned out that they had an “employee recognition programme”
Their best employees all left; that was how they recognized them.
My “treeware” copy hasn’t turned up yet so I might do a a quick trawl through the Scott Adams archives. Anyone else remember it and have a link?